Table of Contents
Preface ix
Time Line x
Acknowledgments xiii
1 Key Ideas About the Social World 1
Conceptualizing Contemporary Society 3
Industrial Society 3
Democracy 4
Individualism 5
Modernity 5
Careers of Ideas 6
Key Ideas and the Field of Sociology 7
Tools for Understanding Social Trends 8
2 Industrial Society: From the Satanic Mills to the Digital Age 11
The Industrial Revolution 12
The Permanent Exile Karl Marx 14
The Intellectual Context of Marx's Ideas 16
The Analyst of Capitalist Industrial Society 19
Marxism After Marx 28
Counterimages of Capitalist Industrial Society: Shifts in the Class Structure 34
Joseph Schumpeter and the Achilles' Heel of Capitalism 35
The Iconoclastic Social Theory of Thorstein Veblen 37
The Academic Outlaw C. Wright Mills 40
Daniel Bell on the Advent of Postindustrial Society 45
On the Transition to Postindustrial Society 47
Critical Responses to Bell 49
Summary 51
3 Democracy: From the Fall of the Bastille to the Fall of the Berlin Wall 53
Prophet, Pessimist, and Realist Max Weber 55
The Divided Soul of Max Weber 56
The Iron Cage: The Economic Undergirding of Modern Democratic Politics 61
Democracy Versus Bureaucracy 65
Herrschaft 69
Politics as a Vocation 70
Talcott Parsons on the Democratic Prospect 71
Parsonian Thought in the Context of His Times 72
Parsons as an Advocate of Social Reform 73
Democracy Under Attack 74
Citizenship in a Democracy 75
Capitalism Versus Democracy? Lipset and Beyond 78
From Alcove No. 1 to the Hoover Institution 79
Economic Development and Democracy 79
Class Structure of Democratic Polities 80
Critical Theory of Jürgen Habermas 82
Democracy and the Public Sphere 84
The Fate of the Public Sphere in Late Capitalism 87
Deepening Democracy: The Colonization of the Life World and the New Social Movements 88
The Civil Sphere: Solidarity and Justice 90
Summary 92
4 Individualism: The Tension Between Me and Us 93
Alexis de Tocqueville on Individualism 95
America as a Model of Europe's Future 96
Destructive Individualism 98
Ferdinand Toennies on Community 99
Toennies's Ideas in the Context of His Life 100
Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft 101
Émile Durkheim and the Quest for Community 103
Bases of Solidarity 104
The Distinctiveness of Durkheim's Ideas 105
The Division of Labor 106
Suicide 107
The Dreyfus Affair and Individualism 113
Durkheim in America 115
Merton's Elaboration of Durkheimian Themes 115
The Lonely Crowd in Mass Society 118
Habits of a New Generation's Heart 123
Goffman on the Sacred Character of the Individual 126
Summary 129
5 Modernity: From the Promise of Modern Society to Postmodern Suspicions 131
Modernity and Postmodernity: Provisional Definitions 132
The Ambiguous Legacy of Georg Simmel 134
Academic Marginality 135
Simmel on the Culture of Modernity 137
Robert E. Park and the Chicago School 144
Race Relations in the Modern World 146
Race as a Social Construct 148
Postmodernism and Sociological Theory 150
The Exhaustion of Grand Narratives 151
Political Orientation of Postmodernists 152
The Real and the Hyperreal in Postmodern Culture 153
Liquid Modernity 158
Anthony Giddens and the Late Modern Age 159
Structuration Theory 161
Consequences of Modernity 163
Summary 167
6 Globalization: Key Ideas in a Global Framework 169
The Need to Think Globally 172
The Emerging Global Economy 173
Globalization and Democracy 176
Toward a Global Culture 181
The Lasting Impact of the Sociological Tradition 184
Review Questions 185
References 189
Index 213
About the Author 223
